Agile

Categories:

A common misconception I have frequently observed in organisations that are adopting agile is around using story points for planning, forecasting and progress tracking. Long- and mid-term planning in agile can have devastating effects on teams, which is why I’d like to shed some light on it and talk about how the situation can be tackled in an agile way providing much better results for the project and the organisation itself.

If you're new to Agile you've probably heard the term Story Point a few times and, especially if you come from a more traditional project management or product background, you may be trying to figure out what a Story Point is and how big one is. This article tries to explain what this is in a more digestible format.

With a well publicised history of multi-billion pound IT failures and operating inefficiencies the UK government took the decision to adopt agile across the public sector. This is a brief look at the history of that adoption and lessons learned for those with an interest in agile project delivery.

While there is much written about Agile, it’s important to understand not only the principles of the frameworks but also what it means to be Agile. The demands of customers, the changing landscape, the speed at which technology is growing and the rate at which we learn means that we...

It is a great joy to be a member of a productive team that delivers exceptional value. In this blog post I will share things that developers can be doing to make that happen. Ideas presented are funded in Agile principles and Lean manufacturing.

Over the past year, I worked on a large project which saw a dramatic shift towards a more Agile way of working. In this post, I will run through exactly what changed, how it made our project better, and what you can do to become more Agile.

This post will address a question that is often raised within organisations transitioning to Agile: is there a place for the Project Manager role when using Scrum on a project? This is a challenging question for IT departments that have historically relied on project managers to control their change portfolio,...

Abstract Extreme Programming [1] (XP) and Scrum [2] are Agile methods based on the same underlying principles, but they also differ in purpose. As a project management methodology, Scrum omits agile technical practices, an area that XP fills with abundance. When used in conjunction it is easy to see how...

Each project is different and each client has different needs. Scott Logic has the flexibility to fit in with client requirements - but often we are asked to take on ownership of the process of software development, as well as the day to day mechanics of cutting code. We have...

Last week I gave a presentation on Agile Development for an event hosted by Codeworks and Sunderland Software City. This blog post is a brief review of my presentation and the event itself. The event was titled, "An Introduction to Agile Methodology - Get a Head Start in 2010", which...